


the july days

by decinq



Series: the february revolution [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Goodbye For The Summer, Jack Knew First, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 22:21:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6131971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decinq/pseuds/decinq
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He says, "I gotta go."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the july days

 

 _Where do we go from here?_  
_Working on the hard parts_  
_Where do we go from here?_  
_These are the best parts_  
_\- Hard Parts, The Courage_

 

 

Jack took a Soviet history class in the first semester of his junior year.

He wasn’t really interested in history in high school--barely went to school as it was--but then again, he wasn’t interested in much of anything other than hockey and vodka and the way Kent bit his lip when he was trying to hold back a laugh.

As he got older, it became easier to care about stuff. His hands still shake and he still panics, can still find something to run through his mind over and over just to keep himself up at night. But it keeps getting easier.

It’s never going to go away, the noise inside his head. He learned that in rehab. No kind of medication will change the fact that he’s mentally ill. He’s probably going to be this way for his entire life. He hadn’t understood, at eighteen, that that was how it worked. He just wanted to be normal. And he’s not sure what he thought, looking back: obviously taking pill after pill after pill wouldn’t do the trick, but he guesses that he thought that it would have.

It’s an easy mistake to make: chasing normalcy when you’ve never felt it a day in your life.

Being at Samwell was the closest thing he could find to normal.

Being at Samwell meant he could sit in his seminar, and he could doodle in the margins of his spiral-ring notebook, and he could argue with the dipshit across from him when the guy tried to defend Stalin.

He was able, just for a little bit, to be a normal person.

The morning before Bittle got hit, Jack had been in class. They’d been talking about the February Revolution, and Jack had underlined _Women’s Day_ in his notebook hard enough to put a dent in the next page. They watched a movie clip from _Battleship Potemkin_ and he’d talked to his prof after class. She let him borrow her copy of the DVD so he could watch the whole thing.

He used to fall asleep every Christmas when his mom put on the black and white version of _the Christmas Carol_ , but the silence of the Potemkin fascinated Jack. No one in Tsarist Russia could say anything, either. It made sense to him that the movie was tragic without saying a word.

And then Bittle went down, and he didn’t get up.

He went down, and Jack should have prevented it. Jack was afraid and guilty and his throat was tight with it. Everything went quiet, and that wasn’t in Jack’s head.

Bittle didn’t get up, and Jack knew.

.

The Provisional government that was established after the February Revolution fell apart during the July Days. Jack knows his happiness isn’t comparable to the crumbling government in revolutionary Russia. Five months before the dissolution of compromise. Another revolution in October.

Jack’s hoping he can manage something a little more permanent.

.

Bittle exhales against Jack’s lips, and Jack’s not sure when his eyes fell closed, but he opens them to look down at Bittle, and it’s immense. If Jack’s head is a war zone, his heart is an armistice.

There were casualties, as far as the metaphor stretches, but when Jack moves back in to kiss Bittle again, it all feels like a fair price to pay.

He’s not surprised at the way it bubbles up in him, the way he just wants to _stay._ He’s not surprised because he’s been fighting it for a long time. He’s not surprised because Bittle’s cheeks are wet and Jack’s heart stuck high in his throat.

His phone buzzes, and then it buzzes again, and he says, “I gotta go,” because he does. He hates it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Just another painful truth in the history of Jack’s life: he’s so close but it’s not close enough. He steps back, but he can’t bring himself to drop Bittle’s hands. He steps back in because there’s nothing else to do; he’s going to fight the good fight; he kisses Bittle again, and Jack’s hand is on Bittle’s arm, Bittle’s hand on Jack’s. They aren’t mirrors of each other, and yet for all the ways they’re different, Jack can’t help but feel like maybe they could be brave enough so long as they stood beside each other.

Before Russia pulled out of the First World War, they suffered most of their casualties because of a lack of weaponry. They weren’t industrialized. They had no means of production. The soldiers further back on the front weren’t armed, and they had to pick up rifles from their fallen comrades on the front lines.

Jack’s battled enough to know that life is a bit more complicated than that. His life will never be normal, but the way he feels, kissing Bittle when he ought to be leaving--he thinks it’s probably the extraordinary thing that normal people feel all the time.

He doesn’t want to go, and it feels awful, but it’s not fruitless. It doesn’t have to be tragic. Maybe it doesn’t need to hurt the way he always thought it would. Maybe there’s a better way to make it.

He says, “I’ll text you,” and he means it.

Bittle says, “Okay,” flat and raspy, eyes wide and cheeks pink.

Jack leaves, because there’s nothing else he knows how to do. He has to leave because if he stays any longer, it’ll only be harder to finally go.

He’s out the front door and down the front porch steps. He wants to turn around, and that’s a new battle. It’s warm outside, the sun high in the sky and the sky bright and blue and so, so open.

His lips are tingling, and he stops in the middle of the sidewalk, halfway back to the pond. He opens his message thread with Bittle and hits send on the message without second guessing himself.

.

The July heat in Madison, Georgia is suffocating in a way Jack hadn’t expected, and the walk from the air-conditioned arrivals gate to Bittle’s truck is more overwhelming than Jack would have expected. It’s sweaty, and he’s wearing a dress shirt and pants because he wanted to make sure he looked appropriate meeting Bittle’s parents, even if it’s not what they think.

And he wants to touch Bittle; wants to kiss him again and hold onto him and never let him go. Bittle says, “You’re gonna wanna change when we get to the house.”

Jack climbs into the passenger seat of Bittle’s truck, and there are no tinted windows on it. There are cars all around them, they’re in the South and it’s different, but it’s still harder than it should be. Jack buckles himself into the seat and then turns to look at Bittle, shifting his body so he’s turned towards the gear stick between them. There’s a water bottle in the cup holder, condensation dripping down the side.

Jack says, “Thanks for inviting me,” because he can’t do any of the things that he wants. It’s a poor substitute, but Jack watches as smile break out across Bittle’s face.

“Don’t be stupid,” Bittle says, and Jack smiles too. Bittle bites his lip between his teeth and Jack reaches out for him. He doesn’t know where to put his hand, just wants to touch him, and his hand catches Bittle’s forearm, his hand on the wheel. Jack squeezes, and Bittle’s cheeks flush.

He looks at Jack and then giggles a bit, shakes his head. “Gosh,” he says, breathless. “You’re gonna kill me.”

July suits Bittle: he has freckles across his nose, and he’s wearing flip flops and a pair of basketball shorts, and his hair is lighter than it was when Jack last saw him. He looks like he belongs in the summer, soft and breeze-kissed and smiling. Jack drops his hand to Bittle’s knee and squeezes again before pulling back and dropping his hands into his own lap.

Bittle turns the key in the ignition. He backs out of their parking spot, and as he’s pulling up to hand over his ticket to pay for short term parking, Jack says, “So.”

Bittle turns to look at Jack, and repeats, “So,” back at Jack. “Momma’s gonna make us watch the fireworks, but we can do whatever you want, otherwise.”

Jack says, “Fireworks sound good,” and when Bittle smiles at him before turning back to look at the road, it lights Jack up from the inside.


End file.
